The Gasp Quotes

“I guess I’m only talking about my childhood. Things that become part of you when you’re a child and then you grow up and somehow they don’t—and that’s how you never get to be a mature person, an adult, with those naïve beliefs in you that never grew up . . .”
― Romain Gary, The Gasp

“He tried to behave, but then despair always took the form of irony with him.”
― Romain Gary, The Gasp

“Progress always slows down before picking up again.”
― Romain Gary, The Gasp

“He was entirely free of what De Gaulle called, in the kitchen Latin of Molière, paralysus respectus, the kind of awed rigidity that seemed to get hold of every Frenchman in the general’s presence.”
― Romain Gary, The Gasp

“Could you let me hear more, without the usual scientific jargon? All this talk of ‘antigravity’ and ‘antimatter’ sounds like scientists’ covering up a big, dark, uncomfortable gaping hole in their knowledge and understanding.”
― Romain Gary, The Gasp

“He was to tell André Malraux later: “Clemeneau used to say: ‘War is a much too serious business to be left to the military.’ And look what happened to Communism when the Communists got hold of it or to the Catholic Church in the hands of the clergy. We are rapidly approaching a point when it will no longer be possible to trust scientists with science.”
― Romain Gary, The Gasp

“Mon général,” Mathieu said quietly, “ever since Greek mythology, Prometheus, Sisyphus, and then Faust, and all the rest— not forgetting, of course, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and other fables— everything, including Oedipus and atom, everything, has always begun as a poetic license, as a . . . metaphor and then invariably it became a hard, down-to-earth reality. The whole purpose of science, indeed, seems to be a validation of metaphors. Sodom and Gomorrah, materialistic West and materialistic East, all the parables and fables . . . as if all the metaphors were pointing to some historical and scientific truth. Mankind told itself everything about itself almost from the start, but it never believed it. If it comes to perish one day, it will be through sheer disbelief . . .”
― Romain Gary, The Gasp

“That might be, but that’s exactly where betrayal of human values begins: when the approach to science is merely scientific.”
― Romain Gary, The Gasp

“What amazed Cardinal Sandomme not a little was that all the bishops present were behaving as if there were something new and unexpected in the situation, as if some new calamity had suddenly hit mankind’s spiritual fiber. Yet this was nothing but the latest step on the road of spiritual degradation mankind had taken long ago . . .”
― Romain Gary, The Gasp

“He felt sad, angry and sorry. It was impossible to let the people benefit fully from scientific and ideological progress without first raising the level of cultural awareness of the masses. They had to discard all the traditional molds that were still narrowing their minds.”
― Romain Gary, The Gasp

“Yet the only answer to science was more science.
Neither was there a lack of clever rationalizations. The ethical way out of scientists who had built the “ultimate” nuclear weapon was that it would make war impossible. The Cercle Érasme had a similar purpose in mind: They were set on taking the power-mad giants even farther in the same direction.”
― Romain Gary, The Gasp

“All that was still needed was genuine inspiration, a flash of pure poetry that would make all the difference between an elaborate, overcomplicated and clumsy effort and the simplicity of beauty.”
― Romain Gary, The Gasp

“There were unfinished paintings against the wall that look promising because they were unfinished, and some finished ones that looked beyond hope.”
― Romain Gary, The Gasp

“He had even tried the violin a few years earlier. Anything to switch talents, but there was no escape. The compulsion was identical to that of any composer or poet for whom the meaning of his life was creation. One could only wonder what Picasso would have done to the world if he had been born a physicist. Terrifying thought . . .”
― Romain Gary, The Gasp

“You know, Chavez, what Kaiser Wilhelm said after he had caused the death of millions? He said: ’Ich habe das nicht gewollt.’ I didn’t want THIS to happen. A worthy epitaph for mankind.”
― Romain Gary, The Gasp

“What’ll be needed,” Chavez said, “is an educational campaign. We must help people to adjust to the new age and convince them there is no harmful effect or any kind of damage to themselves . . .”
“Yeah,” Mathieu muttered. “Promotion.. It’s called promotion in the West, indoctrination in the East.”
― Romain Gary, The Gasp

“You have a very special personal relationship with God, Mathieu. You’re the kind of atheist who can’t forgive God for NOT existing, and who gives the impression that in your eyes the only scientific discovery truly worthy of man’s genious would be the discovery of God.”
― Romain Gary, The Gasp

“May, if man had access to God he would try to tap Him for power . . . what a source of energy! Who can deny that since the dawn of history, mankind‘s fascination with gods, and God has been above all a fascination with power?”
― Romain Gary, The Gasp

“Starr noticed that some of her prettiness was gone now, and that left her beautiful. The inner wear and tear was showing through. Shining through.”
― Romain Gary, The Gasp

“Millions of people live in pain and anguish throughout the world, and it doesn’t leak. I mean, it doesn’t reach anyone. It isn’t catching, as you say.”
― Romain Gary, The Gasp

“He was suddenly overcome with hatred for his own face, for its flat, hard tightness, the narrow lips, the pale, cold eyes, the deadness. Overkill, he thought. That’s what was showing on his face. Overkill. Shambles. You try hard, too hard, to get rid of that juvenile romantic in you and what happens then? You succeed, that’s what happens. And it shows forever on your face. It turns to stone.”
― Romain Gary, The Gasp

“It’s too pragmatic for me,” Valenti said. “The know-how is good enough for technology, not for science.”
― Romain Gary, The Gasp

“He was indeed the epitome of contemporary scientists who, like Mathieu and Einstein himself, as soon as they had achieved some decisive scientific triumph, would start immediately to sign every possible protest against its consequences, running in circles and tearing their hair, whining that theirs was “labor of love,” a pure, disinterested pursuit and that, in Kaiser Wilhelm’s words after he saw the carnage of the First World War, which he had started, “ich habe das nicht gewollt,” that “this is not what I wanted.” Mathieu hated them almost as much as he hated himself. He was one of them, a full ranking member of the club, and this awareness was eating him alive. His only trace of dignity lay in the fact that he was not lying to himself about it. He knew that research, scientific pursuit was a compulsion, and inner must, and an addiction and that the attitude that consists in passing the buck to society as far as the practical consequences of ”pure,” “disinterested,” scientific accomplishment were concerned was mere whitewash, alibi and a refusal to acknowledge both responsibility and self indulgence.”
― Romain Gary

“The guy was typical of the deep dichotomy in human nature, with nobility and evil, darkness and light, love and hate as impossible to disentangle, to separate from each other, as it was to split the gasp. An impossible fission, a fusion as intricate, fundamental as that of culture with civilization.”
― Romain Gary, The Gasp

“Mathieu didn’t know at all what to do about May. He felt a kind of nausea, probably induced by the regular movement of the ball. She was having religious fits again. Jesus Christ, she thought, how many thousands of years will it take people to get over their folklore?”
― Romain Gary, The Gasp

“Mathieu didn’t know at all what to do about May. He felt a kind of nausea, probably induced by the regular movement of the ball. She was having religious fits again. Jesus Christ, she thought, how many thousands of years will it take people to get over their folklore?
There was nothing he could do about that now. She wouldn’t listen to all the scientific explanations and would go on imagining things. People will always keep imagining things. It was impossible to convince them that there is nothing there. Nothing at all. Only matter. Particles. Energy.”
― Romain Gary, The Gasp

“People often told him that Lan was very beautiful, but Pei had no opinion about that. He had never really noticed other women, and to say that a woman was or was not beautiful meant looking at her with an experienced eye.”
― Romain Gary, The Gasp

“The nurses were smiling, the doctors came and smiled, the other patients watched them and listened to their conversation and giggled cheerfully. They all knew who General Pei was, and they were eager to show him their unshakable faith in the life ahead of them, even though almost all in this ward were individually dying. But collectively they had tremendous prospects, and they were lying there on their backs, too weak to move, beaming.”
― Romain Gary, The Gasp

“Our comrades in the textile industry have increased their production more than seventy-five percent.”
Now they could show their delight, even though they could not hold hands or kiss, and everybody knew that there was nothing personal and selfish in the way they smiled at each other, that the light in their eyes and the tenderness of their smiles were due to the increase of the production rate of the textile workers and to the general economic growth of the country. There were no more private little worlds in China.
He went on telling her all the good news, for it would be embarrassing to sit there in silence. There were many other things he wished to say, and above all he wanted to take her in his arms; he wanted that more than anything else in life, almost as much as he wanted the prosperity and freedom of Chinese people. It was time for him to go now, but he could not tear himself away and he sat there rather stiffly, with the red-star peaked cap on his knees and his shaved head exposed, trying to think of something more to say, some of those things that make a girl happy.
“The figures show that we have raised both our industrial and agricultural output by ten percent this year.”
This was a good excuse, and she took his hand in both of hers and pressed it lovingly.
The doctors smiled, the nurses smiled and the patients smiled, sharing their happiness. He was the youngest general in the People’s Army, and though he had come to see his girl, he was addressing all of them and sharing his presence with them.
She held his hand as long as she could without making it appear personal, and then he saw tears in her eyes, but it was all right, nobody could see them.”
― Romain Gary, The Gasp

“I was thinking of the new future that our Communist science is opening to us,” he said.
“Our people are fully aware of that,” Dr. Han Tse said rapidly. “Ever since we exploded our first bomb there has been happiness and rejoicing everywhere.”
― Romain Gary, The Gasp